“The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.”
— Florence Nightingale, Founder of Modern Nursing
Profound respect for the sanctity (i.e., inviolability) of human life has traditionally been the core ethical principle of medicine, but that is no longer the case. Due to policies driven by a godless worldview, vulnerable patients are increasingly in danger of deadly harm.
If someone carries out an act or omission that causes a person’s death, that is murder. I use the term “murder” the way most people understand it, not as a legal term. Believe it or not, murder is routinely committed in our healthcare system. Consequently, we must be alert to dangerous situations and ready to protect ourselves and our loved ones from immoral medical actions and omissions that impose death on patients.
How death is imposed in healthcare settings
The following are three examples of ways medical murder is perpetrated—ways that, when personally encountered by patients and their families, shock and traumatize them.
Many hospitals have futile care policies. The word “futile” means useless. Nonetheless, such policies allow doctors and hospital-appointed ethics committees to interpret what “futile” means and to stop life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of patients and their families. A futile care decision is often based on biased “quality-of-life” opinions. In other words, the treatment is useful, but the patient’s life is deemed not worth living or not worth the cost of care.
Hospice is another area of grave concern. While drafting this article, I received a call on the Healthcare Advocacy and Leadership Organization Helpline from Paul (name changed for privacy), whose mother had just died in hospice. She was admitted to hospice because she had cancer and was suffering from the effects of treatment. Within a few days, she went from fully aware and full of life to semiconscious. Prior to admission she had been receiving a powerful pain medication, but the hospice changed to a stronger drug and added antianxiety medication. In addition, she was deprived of food and fluids. Paul strongly objected. However, another family member was her legal medical decision-maker, so Paul felt powerless. After eight days under hospice “care,” his mother died. This is typical of the reports HALO receives regarding hospice. Granted, people who have had good experiences with hospice are unlikely to call HALO, but we do get a lot of calls like the one from Paul.
Hospice was once a safe haven where terminally ill people were helped to live as comfortably and fully as possible until death occurred naturally. But times have changed. As a patient advocate, I now advise people to carefully investigate a hospice before deciding whether to enroll. (See Questions to Ask a Hospice BEFORE Admission at halovoice.org.)
Declaring comatose people “brain dead” is a way to make certain they die. Brain dead patients are killed either by removing their vital organs for transplantation or by stopping all medical care and treatment. When doctors declare a person brain dead, few people ask this one crucial question: Is he/she really dead? Dr. Heidi Klessig, an expert on brain death, once said, “Doctors can only test if patients are able and willing to respond. There are many conditions in which people are inwardly conscious but unable to respond. Patients such as Zack Dunlap and Jennifer Hamann, who recovered from a ‘brain death’ diagnosis, have horrifying memories of hearing their doctors declaring them to be brain dead. They wanted to respond but could not.”1
Dr. Klessig’s website features a long list of people who were diagnosed as brain dead but who lived to tell the tale.
Protective measures
Doctors and nurses who murder patients represent an earth-shattering shift in medical ethics. Thankfully, there are still members of the medical profession who embrace the sanctity-of-life ethic. The difficulty lies in discerning who can be trusted never to kill. When you or a loved one is in a hospital or under hospice care, be wary and stay alert!
It is also wise to take proactive measures to protect yourself and your loved ones.
First and most importantly, legally appoint a person you trust to be your medical decision-maker (healthcare agent) in the event you are unable to make your own decisions. This may save your life! DO NOT sign a healthcare advance directive (living will, Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care, or POLST form) that is not positively pro-life. In this space-limited article it is impossible to give you all the information you need to make informed decisions regarding advance directives. I urge you to explore HALO’s website, particularly this page: halovoice.org/advance-directives.
Prepare a list of pro-life people you can call for assistance and advice in a medical crisis. The list should include prayer support groups, doctors and nurses, attorneys, patient advocates, clergy, and family members and friends you can count on to visit or stay with you or a loved one. Also prepare a plan and be ready to act quickly in case a patient needs rescuing.
Pray for your doctors, nurses, and other members of your healthcare team. Speak up on behalf of healthcare professionals who strive to protect their patients, sometimes at the price of losing their jobs and even their licenses to practice medicine.
Educate yourself, your healthcare agent, loved ones, friends, and caregivers. Equip yourself and them with the knowledge and tools needed to defend the medically vulnerable, which, sooner or later, most of us will be.
HALO offers a guide called Life-Affirming Principles for Medical Decision-Making (see sidebar). This guide is especially helpful when discussing your values and wishes with your healthcare agent. HALO, American Life League, and other pro-life organizations have websites that are rich sources of information. For example, the Health Care Civil Rights Task Force has a guide for navigating a hospital’s chain of command to help you advocate for yourself and your loved ones.
If you have questions, reach out to me at julie@halovoice.org.
Life-affirming healthcare
Life-affirming healthcare is treatment and care in which the life and safety of each person come first and each person receives medical care based on his/her needs, never with the intention of hastening death, and regardless of the person’s abilities or perceived “quality of life.”
HALO’s ultimate hope and goal is the restoration of reverence for life throughout our healthcare system. Please pray for this intention.
- “Pre-Recording Complete for the March 9 Interview,” Respect for Human Life, March 5, 2024, respectforhumanlife.com/post/pre-recording-complete-for-the-march-9-interview.
SIDEBAR Life-Affirming Principles for Medical Decision-Making
- No matter what life-sustaining procedure/medical treatment is in question, when in doubt, err on the side of life. A medical intervention can be tried with the option of stopping it if it proves ineffective or excessively burdensome for the patient.
- It is the physician’s obligation to truthfully and fully, in layperson’s terms, discuss with the patient/proxy/family/guardian the benefits, risks, cost, etc. of available medical means that may improve the patient’s condition/prolong life.
- The patient or the patient’s legal representative makes the decision whether a treatment is too burdensome.
- It is impossible to make morally sound, sensible, informed healthcare decisions based on guesswork about some future illness or injury and possible treatment options. Healthcare decisions must be based on current information.
- Two extremes are to be avoided:
• Insistence on physiologically useless or excessively burdensome treatment even when a patient may legitimately wish to forgo it.
• Withdrawal or withholding of treatment with the intention to hasten/cause death. - The motive for administering pain medication must be to relieve pain. Death must not be sought or intended.
- Nutrition and hydration, whether a person is fed with a spoon or through a tube, is basic care, not medical treatment. Insertion or surgical implantation of a feeding tube takes medical expertise, but it is an ordinary life-preserving procedure for a person who has a working digestive system but is unable to eat by mouth.
• ACCEPTABLE: During the natural dying process, when a person’s organs are shutting down so that the body is no longer able to assimilate food and water or when their administration causes serious complications, stopping tube-feeding or spoon-feeding is both medically and morally appropriate.
• UNACCEPTABLE: When a person is not dying—or not dying quickly enough to suit someone—food and fluids are often withheld with the intent to cause death because the person is viewed as having an unacceptably low quality of life and/or as imposing burdens on others.
This information has been condensed for space purposes. You can find the original document at halovoice.org/wp-content/uploads/HALO_Life-Affirming-Principles-for-Medical-Decision-Making.pdf.
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